window behind the counter, he saw orange flames racing through the inner office. The plasterboard wall around that window began to smolder; beige paint bubbled and curled from the tremendous heat.
He’d wanted Caitlin to set a small fire with enough smoke to empty the building. Clearly, she had gone overboard. Jack thought about escaping the building, too, but a sudden noise changed his mind.
Jack heard a clang as a steel door burst open. A Hispanic man in a gray uniform stumbled out of a stairwell, choking against the billowing smoke. Jack pushed the man toward the exit, then ran into the stairwell and slammed the door behind him.
The stairwell was relatively free of smoke. There was no way down; the stairs ended on the ground floor. So Jack climbed the stairs to the second floor. He found another steel door, this one locked from the other side. Cautiously Jack peered through a small wire-lined window in the center of the door. He saw long rows of storage bins, each with its own door and padlock — none of them large enough to hold a North Korean missile launcher.
At the opposite side of the room Jack saw sliding metal-mesh doors blocking an empty elevator shaft. Smoke was beginning to penetrate the second floor through the floorboards and elevator shaft. It hung in the air.
Jack climbed to the third floor, the fourth, then the fifth. On each floor the steel doors were locked, the floors themselves seemingly deserted — just row upon row of storage bins, and an empty elevator shaft on the opposite wall. No sign of a terrorist cell, no trace of the Long Tooth missile launchers.
Finally Jack reached the sixth floor and the top of the stairs. Only a ladder climbed higher, leading up to a hatch in the ceiling. As he approached the steel door, Jack wondered if he was on a wild goose chase, if he’d trapped himself inside a burning building for nothing.
When the fire alarms began to sound, Tarik dropped his hammer, barked instructions in Pashto for the others to stay where they were and to keep working. They had to pack up the precious cargo in wooden crates, for transport to the airports, no matter what else was going on around them.
Tarik opened his cell, dialed up Taj. He cursed when his call was rerouted to a voice mail system. He left his leader a warning in Pashto, then ended the call.
He turned, found the men struggling under the weight of the missiles; the launchers had not yet been sealed in their boxes. He wanted to curse these men, goad them into action with kicks and insults. But he did not. These men were old, some with missing eyes, hands, limbs — their legacies of the war against the Soviets.
Tarik reminded himself that these men were all that remained of Taj Ali Kahlil’s once-mighty clan, heroes of the Afghan war, men who boldly risked their lives against the Russian infidels who’d invaded their homeland. They had shed blood and limbs and eyes for the cause of Muslim freedom — only to be betrayed by the American intelligence services that aided them.
Instead of berating these men, Tarik felt only respect. He was about to pitch in to help when Tarik saw movement through the window of the fire exit. Someone was lurking on the stairwell.
Tarik drew his Uzi and approached the steel door.
It took Liam a long time to cross the ten lanes of traffic on Queens Boulevard. Finally he was on the sidewalk, just a few storefronts away from Green Dragon Computers, when a black BMW squealed to a stop in front of the shop. The driver double-parked, blocking Shamus’s car, then leaped out.
Liam halted when he saw Taj Ali Kahlil. The Afghani man wore an unadorned white skullcap over a lightweight suit. He strode into the Green Dragon store, an angry scowl darkening his long, narrow face.
Liam ducked into the exterior doorway of a dry cleaner’s. An Asian woman inside the shop eyed him warily through the plate-glass window. Breathing hard, he shifted the metal case in his sweaty hands. He’d been dragging that attache around so long, it felt like a bleedin’ anchor.
His mind was in turmoil. He never wanted trouble, just a bit of money. Now trouble found him in the shape of a shiny metal attache case and the piece of plastic and silicone it contained. Liam recalled the violence the FBI had used to smash their way into the Brooklyn store and decided Taj must be some kind of crook.
Now Liam didn’t know what to do. He thought of his sister, and the world of hurt he was bringing down on her.
And the next to the last thing Liam wanted to do was face Taj and the Lynch brothers — he knew they were crooks now. Who knew what they would do to him?
So Liam turned and hurried away from the computer store as fast as he could. A few blocks away, he spied a pay phone and dug into his pocket for some coins, dialed The Last Celt. The pub was open now and Caitlin should have been working lunch duty. But it was a stranger who answered on the second ring.
“Can I speak to Caitlin, please?”
“Who’s Caitlin?” the voice growled in reply.
“There’s an apartment upstairs. Is that where this Caitlin lives?”
Liam heard other voices in the background, none he recognized. He stopped talking, but did not hang up.
“Listen, son,” the voice said. “My name is Detective McKinney of the New York Police Department. If you know something about the murder of Donnie Murphy you’d better turn yourself in right now.”
Liam hung up the receiver down, letting it go like a poisonous snake. Sick with anxiety, he didn’t know where to turn. All he wanted to do was lose the attache case and go home. Now it looked like he was stuck with the bloody case, and he had no home to go back to.
The fire alarm continued to ring throughout the massive brick building. On the sixth-floor landing, Jack peered through the wire-meshed glass, spied a group of elderly men in turbans and skullcaps frantically trying to load two Long Tooth shoulder-fired missile launchers and a dozen missiles into two large, unmarked wooden crates. A dolly waited near the open doors to the freight elevator to carry the deadly weapons away.
One of the men, younger than the rest, with an Uzi tucked into his sash, turned his head in Jack’s direction. Jack ducked behind the door, but not quick enough — he was certain the man had spotted him. Slowly Jack drew the Mark 23 USP from its shoulder holster. A moment later, over the wail of the fire alarms, he heard the handle click, and the metal door opened outward. Jack immediately thrust the barrel of his gun through the narrow opening and fired. The blast was deafening. It continued to echo inside the confines of the stairwell as Jack ripped open the door and jumped over the corpse of the man he’d just killed.
Jack fired as he moved. Another man’s head exploded, and a third pitched backward, clutching the fountain of blood that gushed from the wound in his throat.
Another young Afghani appeared out of nowhere, to let fly with a volley from an assault rifle. Jack rolled behind a steel storage bin as the chattering AK–47 tore up the floorboards where he’d stood only a split second before. With a shooter pinning him down, two of the old men stumbled toward the Long Tooth missile launchers, rolled them off the rack and onto the dolly. Jack managed to shoot one of the men, who had a stump for a right hand. But even though the Afghani was wounded, he stubbornly helped his colleague wheel the dolly into the freight elevator.
Jack knew he had to stop these missiles from arriving at their destination, but whenever he tried to move out of cover, the young Afghani with the assault rifle would open up on him. Suddenly the fire door opened again. Jack whirled, figuring he’d been flanked. When he saw a blue uniform, Jack tried to warn the newcomer of the danger. But the AK–47 barked first, and the New York City policeman who’d been sitting in the squad car was ripped in half in a hail of bullets.
Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Jack squeezed off four shots. They slammed the shooter backward, into a wall.
Jack was on his feet in time to see the metal grate close and the freight elevator begin its descent. Crossing the floor, he scooped up the AK–47. The banana magazine was nearly full — the shooter must have reloaded just before he shot the cop. Jack reached the elevator, thrust the muzzle through the grate, and opened fire.
But instead of firing down, into the cage, Jack shot the cables. Sparks flew, a pulley wheel broke and tumbled down the shaft. Then he heard a ripping sound as the cable snapped.
Howls echoed up the shaft as the freight elevator plunged to the basement. The screams ended abruptly when the elevator car was dashed to pieces. Smoke billowed out of the shaft, rolled over Jack until he had to shield
